Like golf courses in the desert.

(... Palm Springs has around 100 golf courses)

While we're talking about Americans using anything but the metric system (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49746745), how many golf courses' worth of water is Google's 10.9 billion "gallons" a year?

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zahlman a day ago | parent [-]

ChatGPT tells me

> As a historical U.S. benchmark, an average 18-hole facility had about 80.7 irrigated turf acres and used approximately 152.5 acre-feet/year—about 49.7 million gallons (188 million litres) annually.

So about 220.

But it's still, ahem, a drop in the bucket compared to the California almond industry.

	▲	simonw a day ago \| parent [-]
		A while back I satirically suggested https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/17/spot-birds-not-golf/ that if hyperscalers wanted to relieve the pressure over data center water use they could buy up a few dozen country clubs and turn them into public parks. (I was only half joking)